CHAPTER 4

TWO DAYS LATER

"You were face to face with Raymond Reddington, and you didn't even try to slap cuffs on him?" John Doggett was saying with the same incredulity he had considered the idea of alien invasions. "I'm surprised the Bureau didn't kick you out right then."

The reunion of the X-Files unit - the first time they had all been together since New Mexico - had been proceeding in typical fashion. Doggett looked like he had aged particularly well, and Monica Reyes, apart from the occasional fleck of grey in her hair, didn't look like all those years had passed her. But, as had often been the case the few times that Mulder and Doggett had been in the same room, there was a tone of general disbelief in his tone.

"Oh, it's better than that, Agent Doggett," Scully said. "The way you kept goading the man, I'm surprised he didn't pull his gun and kill you right then."

"Reddington clearly wanted something from us," Mulder reminded them. "If Scully and I had been out of the Bureau, he probably wouldn't have been nearly as patient."

"And this something has to do with this Smoking Man you and Scully spent all those years trying to bring down." Reyes asked.

"That's right. The two of you never had the pleasure of dancing with that particular monster." Mulder mentioned. "Lucky bastards."

"I read the files on him, or at least what little you had on him," Doggett told them. "And I had the unfortunate displeasure of meeting his son."

The minute he said that he wished he could take it back. No one had mentioned William in a long time - Mulder and Scully barely talked about themselves - but John knew from firsthand experience that one never really got over losing a child. Jeffrey Spender may have been a victim, but he had done far more damage to Scully in a few short hours than his father had ever done. At least, that was Doggett's opinion.

"Shouldn't he be dead?" Reyes clearly sensed the change in mood too. "You saw the place he was in get blown to smithereens."

"The man has more lives than a goddamn cat," Mulder admitted. "I'm not a hundred percent he can die. I'm incredibly tempted to send him to Reddington, lock them in a room for a week, and see who comes out alive."

"The man has to be ninety if he's a day," Doggett reminded them.

"Then it might be a fair fight."

"In any case, we're not going to be dealing with Reddington again." Scully seemed relieved to be bringing them back to new business.

"You know, I thought the Bureau couldn't make a bigger blunder than when they got into bed with Whitey Bulger, but this, this just seems a million times worse." Doggett shook his head. "Who the fuck had the brains to sign off on this shit?"

"No idea," Mulder admitted. "But we're about to find out. Skinner just set up an appointment to meet with this taskforce tomorrow morning."

"You're part of an interagency cooperation," Reyes now sounded doubtful herself. "That sounds even less believable than aliens coming to take over the world."

"I can play well with others."

Mulder had been used to Scully's eyebrow being able to express more than a thousand words, but he rarely remembered it shooting up that high. Doggett and Reyes didn't have to say anything either. "I've mellowed as I've matured." Still no reaction. "I have!"

"In any case, our appointment with the taskforce is scheduled for 10 tomorrow morning," Scully went on. "Mulder and I are the only ones who've been invited."

"Do they even know that Monica and I were assigned to the X-Files?" Doggett asked.

"We have to assume they do." Mulder told them. "But unless they managed to put a rush on the paperwork, they don't know that I invited you back. I'm hoping that we can use this to our advantage."

"If you don't trust them about this, why are you agreeing to work with them in the first place?" Reyes asked. "There have to be easier ways to find out whether this bad penny has indeed turned up."

"We spent the better part of a decade chasing this bastard, and we couldn't even come up with a first name for him." Mulder reminded them. "I doubt that they have anything that resembles a genuine lead. But on the very, very remote chance that Reddington is telling the truth, I think we have to pursue it."

"And if the experiments really have begun again..." Scully didn't have to finish the sentence.

"Say they're telling the truth." Doggett put forth. "Shouldn't we at least try to be honest with them."

"They work with Raymond Reddington. They must be as ill-equipped to believe in anybody's honesty as we are. " Scully added. "Add to this the fact that we work for the same government they do, and they must be certain we've got an unsavory agenda."

John Doggett had worked on the X-Files less than two years. But he had learned very quickly just how corrupt the government he had taken an oath to was. His transfer to bio-terrorism after the unit had been closed had almost come as something of a relief - foul as it was, shit wasn't capable of lying to your face. But he had known that he had left a lot of his job unfinished. And even though trying to solve the mysteries of the X-Files had been extremely unsatisfying to a man who wanted simple answers to questions, a part of him had been grateful when Mulder had contacted him last week. Even though he'd had a lot of trouble getting along with the man the brief time they had known each other, he had always respected the man's quest.

Now, even though he wasn't wild about finding more dirt about some of his fellow agents, the need for answers was still as demanding as ever. He just didn't believe, any more than the others did, that Reddington would give them gratis. So he decided to go along with one of those bizarre plans.

Then he heard what Mulder and Scully wanted to do. And he began to realize why Scully had been ditched by her partner so many times. If she'd heard how crazy these plans were, she'd have kneecapped him herself. And yet, this time she seemed more than willing to go along with them.

Monica, who had a far more open mind - perhaps even more open than Mulder's - seemed even more astounded by it. "You know, if this goes wrong, you may break your own record of getting kicked out of the Bureau," she told him.

"They're a secret taskforce," Mulder reminded them. "They can't exactly go running to Kersh if we step on their toes."

Kersh had been transferred to the Seattle Office in 2005, but telling Mulder this would be splitting hairs. Besides, the larger point was true. "Skinner's okay with this?" Doggett asked instead.

"He wasn't. Until we showed them what we knew about our meeting." Scully actually seemed to be smiling a little. "Then I believe his exact words were: 'I've really missed you guys'."

Skinner must have been bored out of his mind while his favorite agents were out of the Bureau to be so grateful to see that they were up to their mischief again. "How exactly are we going to play this?"

TASK FORCE LOCATION

Revealing the location of their base of operations had not exactly gone over well with Ressler or the others. Then Liz had revealed the photos that Mulder and Scully had shown of her, and everybody had gotten incredibly more alarmed.

Samar had tried, with a little less rigor than she usually did, that Mulder had used his own government sources to try and track her movements. It hadn't taken much for Liz and Aram to demolish the argument, especially considering that Fox Mulder was probably the last person who anybody in the government would trust with this kind of information.

"Given his reputation, he'd probably have been far more likely to go to the Post with that kind of story." Ressler had pointed out. "He may be the last man in the Bureau who still believes in the system."

The more pressing question to everybody was if Mulder was telling the truth, how had he managed to get his hands on the information in the first place. Interestingly enough, Aram had something of an idea.

"Mulder always had a fair amount of support among the hacking community," he had told them. "There was this fringe newsletter - the Lone Gunman - I got the occasional copy from time to time. On more than one occasion, there'd be an article detailing his theories. Magazine went under in 2001, but he's still got some support there, even after he disappeared."

Knowing all that, Liz realized that they should've been a little more careful just letting him in their operation. But Mulder and Scully were FBI, and they had impressed her by how willing they had been to call Reddington on his bullshit. And they did need their help.

So Liz had been willing to show Mulder and Scully to the warehouse where she had been working for the last two years.

As she was entering her pass code, Mulder had asked her a question that no one had really bothered to ask: "Is it difficult coming back here?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You were drummed out of the Bureau for killing the Attorney General. Even though you were cleared, they must look at you differently."

Liz really was surprised at the question. "I long since gave up caring what the people at the Bureau thought," she said honestly. "The work is what matters. As long as I'm doing it, I really could give a shit."

"Even given the fact you basically pissed away a promising career in the Bureau to chase monsters and ghosts?" Scully asked.

What the hell were these two up too? "I really do think you're projecting a bit."

"Keep telling yourself that."

Liz was spared any further question, as by now they had gotten through the final layer of security and were walking into the task force.

Cooper was waiting for them. "Agents Mulder and Scully. It's a pleasure meeting both of you."

Scully gave what Liz was beginning to realize was a trademark eyebrow raise. "I'd normally say something about our reputations proceeding us, but clearly they haven't."

"I'll introduce you around."

Mulder, in the meantime, was in a world of his own, as he got a really good look at the scope of what she had been working on. "Holy shit," he muttered. "So this is what it's like to work in a real division of the FBI."

Scully seemed bemused. "You head a division."

"Yes, but I never had funding." Mulder looked in a daze. "Clearly there are side benefits to getting in bed with a criminal."

Mulder clearly had no intention of letting any of them off the hook. Liz was a little surprised that Cooper wasn't more offended.

"I guess our reputation proceeds us as well," Samar actually seemed a little amused by it.

Mulder managed to shake her hand, still staring at all the screens he saw.

It took a few minutes for everybody to get introduced. Mulder then apparently made a decision. "Well, if t'were be done, t'were best done quickly." He reached into a case he was carrying and brought out a very thick file. "This is everything I have managed to gather on Cancer Man," he said slowly, handing it to Aram.

Liz took a breath. Until now, she hadn't been certain the two agents were going to help them.

"I wish I could give you more information about his identity, but the closest I ever came was an article in a magazine that turned out to be nothing." Mulder admitted. "Sad truth is, I probably could've gotten it had I really tried."

Ressler was looking over the file, which was mostly paper. "Seems to me like you got more than enough."

"I once knew where he lived."

That got everybody's attention. Mulder shrugged. "An associate of mine provided me with his address. I stuck a gun in his face, but I didn't have the balls to pull the trigger. By the time my head got cool enough to try and look again, he'd moved out, no forwarding address. Every other location I've had on him is at least fifteen years out of date."

Apparently Mulder did have the stones for this kind of job. "You told Reddington you didn't think the bastard could die," Liz found herself saying.

"That doesn't change the fact I could've pulled the switch on him myself." Mulder sounded depressed by this fact. "He was impressed by me. Said I was becoming a player. Guess he was wrong."

Aram was clearly impressed by the array of detail. Technologically, it was primitive. Many of the articles was even handwritten. But there was enough there to make it clear that there was enough on CSM - an abbreviation Mulder used often - was a lot higher on the blacklist then even Reddington had allowed.

"Don't get too happy over these files," Scully said. "Much of what's there is high on speculation and little on solid evidence. What would do know is that the man in these files may have been involved in a series of abductions and biological experimentations dating back decades."

"You have proof of this."

Mulder looked at Scully. "I was one of those abductees," she told them slowly. "One of the files is mine. I was abducted by a group of men in August of 1994, and I was subjected to tests that left me near dead, would later give me cancer, and render me infertile."

Liz had not heard these details, and suddenly she had a face to these atrocities - something she almost never did.

"And you believe the smoking man was responsible. Why?"

Now out would come the mention of aliens, something that had never gone over particularly well whenever he had mentioned them before. But once again, Mulder surprised her.

"Honestly, I'm really not sure. For much of my career, I'd say it had something to do with the colonization of our planet by aliens." He looked at Scully. "If you asked my better 51.5%, she'd tell you that she believed that it was the work of a group of men determined to experiment on Americans in order to develop better soldiers. Our thinking rarely corresponded much of the time we worked together." He flashed a smile at her. "Probably why we worked together so well."

"Where our thinking does align is with this man." Scully picked up a picture from within the file. It was clearly dated - Liz thought it was from the 1970s at the latest. "For decades, he and a group of men worked together to conduct these experiments. And as secretive as these experiments work, they worked just as hard at keeping them secret. As a result, almost every link we have to him is dead."

The photograph contained two men in their forties clearly having an argument. Scully's finger was on the man on the right. "I'm guessing the man on the left is dead." Ressler said.

There was a very pained reaction from Mulder. "The other man is my father. William Mulder. Smoking Man had him killed more than twenty years ago."

Everybody in the room did a good job of covering a wince. Cooper recovered first. "Forgive me for asking, but was he involved?"

"Up to his eyeballs." Mulder told them. "He was a friend of my father for a very long time, going back to when he worked in the State Department. I've never been able to prove, but I'm pretty sure he was responsible for the abduction of my sister."

There was obviously more to the story, but Liz knew from the files they had gotten that Samantha Mulder had been reported as dead by her brother in 2000. Nothing could help them by tapping this vein.

Cooper clearly knew this as well. "According to Liz, you were equally sure that the Smoking Man was dead. How certain are you of that?"

This time, Scully answered. "When Mulder and I were fugitives, Mulder took me to a pueblo in New Mexico where we found the Smoking Man. He was smoking from his trachea, and looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over, but he was as evil as ever."

"The bastard had given me the intel and access to get into Mount Weather," Mulder told him. "He wanted me to find some information. That's where I was caught, and where I 'killed' Knowle Rohrer in self-defense. I wouldn't be surprised if the arrogant prick had sent me there just to get killed."

"What information did you find?" Samar asked.

"Nothing's that relevant anymore." Mulder told them slowly. "It was probably just another in a long string of lies. Anyway, at the time, we had greater concerns. Someone sent unmarked helicopters there, probably to kill me and Scully. We got out just in time to see them blow that pueblo to hell."

That would seem to be a pretty conclusive way to kill somebody, but if Mulder had been telling the truth, he had survived near death experiences before. The big question was, how had he survived, and how had Reddington managed to find him?

"Maybe there's a way your system can find him," Scully told him, "but even when we knew he was alive, he only showed himself when he wanted to be seen. We still have no idea how anyone got into contact with him. He just appeared, like the flying goddamned Dutchman."

Aram had been going over much of the files. "It's still a place to start." he said slowly. "I'll see what I can do."

"Before you do, there's something else you should see." Scully looked at Mulder, who nodded. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a thumb drive. "Unfortunately, you're not going to be as happy with what's on it."

She handed it to Aram, who actually seemed grateful to have something that was from this century to go over. He looked at Cooper. "Miss Keen already has a good idea what's on it."

A sinking feeling came to Liz's stomach. She nodded at Cooper, who gave a similar look to Aram.

It took less than five seconds for the drive to upload. He started opening the files, which had only alpha-numeric codes on them. It soon became very clear what they were looking at. Ressler's reaction pretty much spoke for all of them. "What the fuck?"

It was the same kind of footage that Scully had shown Liz earlier. Only this time, it was for all of them. Most of it was benign - Aram going to a restaurant for a meal, Ressler going to work out, Cooper going to visit his wife - but the fact that it was there, shot from multiple angles, with such clarity - that it made Liz feel nauseous all over again.

"I'm going to ask you the same question I asked last time" Liz demanded. "Where did you get this information?"

"When you're underground as long as Scully and I were, you make contact with some of the more rejected masses." Mulder told them grimly. "One of them was an old friend of some old friends. A hacker with the unlikely screen name of Jimmy Bond. He managed to get into the NSA server - something that only a handful of people can do without being detected - and go through the files of surveillance that our government seems to be keeping on us every minute of every day. The footage you're seeing, by the way, only covers the last three days. There's teraflops of it out there."

There were so many questions to ask. Cooper managed to recover first. "Who's responsible for this?"

"People who don't exist, Mr. Cooper," Scully said sadly. "In 2002, someone who claimed to be a whistleblower told me that there were thousands of people devoted to it. People whose identities didn't exist. If I were to give you the names of the people responsible, in half an hour's time, they would be replaced with someone else with the same non-identity. That man was assassinated within hours of him speaking to me."

Samar was still recovering from seeing her life documented - no doubt the Mossad agent was astounded to find years of counter-surveillance techniques were essentially worthless. "How long has this been going on?"

"I wish I knew," Mulder told them. "Decades, maybe. I've known the government has been capable of doing horrendous things - there's a very strong possibility that this is the most banal of them - but it's by far the most insidious. I am certain of one thing. It has nothing to do with national security, and everything to do with keeping the people in the dark."

"Is the Smoking Man responsible for this?" Aram finally seemed to recover from uploading the files.

"Who knows?" Mulder asked. "But I'm goddamn sure he did nothing to stop it. That's why we needed you to see this. We need you to understand the nature of the enemy."

There had been some pretty horrifying names that Reddington had given them over the years, but even after everything she had been through, particularly those months on the run, Liz didn't think that she still had a capacity to be shocked. She was wrong.

"I'm hoping, now that you understand just how deep this goes, that you'll do the right thing." Mulder said.

This seemed a little bit of a non sequitur. "What are you talking about?" Ressler asked.

"When Mulder and I agreed to help you, it was under the condition that we never see Reddington." Scully said slowly. "Hopefully, we can convince you to come to your senses as well."

Warning bells were starting to go off in Liz's head. "This taskforce wouldn't exist without Reddington," she said slowly.

"That and three bucks will buy you an espresso." Mulder's tone hadn't changed, but there was something that smacked of anger. "Indulge me for a minute. Let's say you get all the names that Reddington gives you. What do you think the FBI will do? Throw you a goddamn parade? Slap medals on your chest?"

It was a question that Liz had been pondering for a long time. The system was rigged in favor of organizations like the Cabal. Even if they managed to bring all of these criminals to justice - and that was Reddington's form of justice, not the one she'd signed up for when she'd joined the Bureau - there were no rewards. She'd already seen friends of her die. Her marriage had been shown to be a lie; never mind that it was on its way to being repaired. And Reddington wasn't even promising that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

"You're telling me that when you were first assigned to the X-Files, you didn't test the limits of your profession?" Samar asked.

"And the costs for us were even higher," Mulder replied. "My father and Scully's sister were murdered. You heard what they did to Scully when they took her. Both of our careers were basically eaten. And we got next to nothing in return. No resolution to anything we tried to stop. Nothing was solved. We're cautionary tales, not figures to admire."

"And there is one key difference between us and you." Scully told them. "We never got into bed with the devil. Maybe we'd have gotten the proof of the paranormal that we spent nearly a decade chasing. Maybe we'd have gotten the justice for all of the dead. But if the Smoking Man had come to us and offered us the same deal that you were given - and he tried more than once - we told him to go to Hell."

Under other circumstances, Mulder might have consider this comical - trying to persuade the FBI to listen to him give lessons on morality. Especially considering that there had been a couple of occasions when they had dipped their toes into the Cancer Man's stream. But this time, he was praying they'd see the light, knowing full well they wouldn't.

As he looked over the faces of the people on the taskforce, he wasn't that surprised he couldn't read them very well. He'd been out of practice for more than a decade, and these were people skilled at keeping their poker faces. Except for one of them.

"Agent Mulder, um, I know you know more about this than I ever will," Aram said slowly. "I mean, you were chasing bad guys, when I was still in grade school. But the taskforce has done really good work. I realize, you have no reason to believe me, but I truly believe we've made the world a better place through our work."

"Has it ever occurred to you that you're just doing Reddington's dirty work?" Mulder demanded. "That all of this, all of it, is just some elaborate agenda so that he can further his global criminal enterprise. That he's just working off his personal enemies list, and you're helping him cross the names off one by one?"

It was something that had occurred to Liz on more than one occasion, even after she had put three bullets into the Attorney General. She knew how deep the Cabal's roots were. They might even include some of the men Mulder and Scully had been chasing. But just because they were horrible people didn't make Reddington any less of a villain.

Mulder and Scully could be right. They sure as hell were right that there was no pot of gold waiting for them at the end of the rainbow. But she had to believe that Reddington was the man who had risked everything to save her life and restore her freedom. Otherwise, all that was waiting for her at the end was darkness.

"We've been told on more than one occasion to shutter our doors," Cooper told them. "And I realize trying to make an argument in favor of Reddington is not something you want to hear. But if you really think we're as irredeemable as him, you can walk out the door right now, and we'll proceed without you."

Both of them maintained stonefaces of their own. Given everything about how they'd acted, Liz would not have been surprised if they'd have walked out the door right then.

Finally, Mulder sighed. "I didn't really expect you to listen to me," he said slowly. "God knows, I'm used to it after almost a quarter of a century. But right now, Smoking Man is far too big a threat to let disappear because of what I think."

Inwardly, Liz breathed a sigh of relief.

"We do have a couple of conditions, though. And like everything else, they are non-negotiable. " Mulder told them. "If and when we find this bastard, we get to him first. Not Reddington."

That was fairly easy to manage. Liz knew he'd agree to it. "And the second?" Cooper asked.

Scully looked around. "You still answer to some people. Justice, Homeland Security. You can't let anyone else know that you're tracking this man."

Ressler seemed puzzled by this. "You don't even have a name for this guy. What makes you think he'll know that we're searching for him just by an alias?"

"This bastard has ties to almost every government agency, and half the world's governments." Mulder told them flatly. "We have to at least make the assumption he knows about your taskforce. If he hears about this in any way, he will vanish before we can come close to finding him."

This seemed like an unhealthy level of paranoia. Then Liz remembered the footage they'd seen. Perhaps they weren't crazy enough yet. She looked at Director Cooper.

"We'll play it as close to the vest as we can." he tried to assure Mulder and Scully. "Are we agreed?"

Mulder looked at Scully. She gave a very small nod. "Back down the crazy bus we go," she said.

"So if what you're saying about most of his colleagues and associates being dead, how do we get a bead on him?" Ressler asked.

"Reddington's certain the experiments have started again." Mulder said slowly. "In that case, we have to find where they're probably taking place. The most likely place is America's railways."

Scully nodded. "In 1995, I met with a group of women associated with the local Mutual UFO Network in Scranton. Even though I'd never seen them before, they all knew me. Apparently, they recognized me from the experiments. All of them had had microscopic implants put in the back of their necks as tracking monitors. All of them had them removed. When I tried to find the origin of the chips, I learned that the source of these were a group of Japanese scientists who had experimented on people like me in these same railcars."

"There isn't any chance we could talk to any of these women?" The moment Samar asked the question, she somehow knew it was a mistake.

"They all had cancer." Scully said slowly. "By February of 1997, they were all dead. I developed cancer around that same time. Even I'm not sure why it went into remission, but I know for certain it happened after I had a similar chip removed from the back of my neck"

Again, there was clearly more to the story, but they all knew better than to ask right now. "Is that where we should start looking?" Ressler asked.

"The best place to start looking is a biotech company called Roush Pharmaceuticals." Mulder told them. "It's a shell company that's one of the groups behind these experiments. They've been above board making wonder drugs for the last fifteen years. But my guess is the side effects are even worse than the ones they announce at the end of ads for Viagra."

Cooper looked at Aram. "I'll get on that now." he told them.

"All right. We've covered a lot of ground today." Mulder said. "Could we get back to this tomorrow morning?"

Cooper was a little surprised. "You don't want to get started now?"

"In order to get the intel we'll need to dig up the sonofabitch, I'll have to parse through the rest of my files, narrow the conspiracy down to something that can be digitized. I've got friends working on that, but.." Mulder shook his head. "Most of it is years out of date. Besides, I'm going to want to brief the rest of our team."

"You mean Agents Doggett and Reyes?" Ressler asked. "I'm a little surprised you didn't bring them with you."

"They just flew cross country to get here." Scully told them. "We figured they'd need the time to recharge. Besides, they only started working on the X-Files after Cancer Man was presumed dead. Neither of them even knew he existed. We didn't think they'd be able to help."

It was definitely a start, and the sad truth was, this was a lot more intelligence than usually got when they began their chases. "We'll see you then." Cooper said.

Mulder and Scully started to leave, but Liz trailed behind them. "There's something you didn't tell them." she said.

"There's a lot of things I didn't tell you." Mulder countered. "I've got a lot of problems with authority."

Understatement of the decade. "You said earlier that the Smoking Man killed your father. You told me and Ressler that he was your father."

"I believe my exact words were 'possibly he was my father'. The only time he ever admitted it was when I was hallucinating from a major brain trauma, so you can understand why I hedged." Mulder told her.

There was a story. Liz was beginning to think, just like with Reddington, there was a story connected to everything.

"Word of advice." Mulder said slowly. "I heard enough about you on the news to know that you've been linked to some particularly shady parentage yourselves."

"That was bullshit," Liz told him

"But you don't know who your real parents are." Liz decided to stay silent. "Just a word of advice, from someone who grew up in a truly wretched home environment. Genetics don't make you who you are. And sometimes the unexplained is best left unexplained. That's one of the few things Scully and I have been able to agree on over the years."

It was one thing to not want to know if there were such things as aliens or demons, quite another not to want to find out who your parents were. Then again, there had always been a huge elephant whenever it came to her dealing with Reddington and given what little she knew about the Smoking Man, he sounded ten times worse.

"I'll consider it." was all she was willing to say.

"I suppose that I shouldn't be asking for anything more." Mulder said. "Get back to us when you find something."

Liz nodded, then headed back inside

Mulder and Scully waited until they were back in their FBI vehicle before they said anything else. "They actually seem like good people," Scully said.

"Yes, they do." he admitted. "But you heard what they said about Reddington. And I will be goddamned if I fully trust any government authority, much less one that has decided to work with a man on the Most Wanted List."

"And when they find out?" Scully asked.

"I find it hard to believe that this task force has never been betrayed by authority before." Mulder countered. "Besides, they know our reputation. They should know better."

"We've been back in the Bureau five minutes, and you're trying to torch our reputation already." Scully shook her head. "That's my Mulder."

He smiled and got on the phone. "Jimmy?" he asked.

"We're in."